bears upon the case?"

"I cannot say that I do unless it were that he wished to be able
to deny his signature if an action for breach of promise were
instituted."

"No, that was not the point. However, I shall write two letters,
which should settle the matter. One is to a firm in the City, the
other is to the young lady's stepfather, Mr. Windibank, asking
him whether he could meet us here at six o'clock tomorrow
evening. It is just as well that we should do business with the
male relatives. And now, Doctor, we can do nothing until the
answers to those letters come, so we may put our little problem
upon the shelf for the interim."

I had had so many reasons to believe in my friend's subtle powers
of reasoning and extraordinary energy in action that I felt that
he must have some solid grounds for the assured and easy
demeanour with which he treated the singular mystery which he had
been called upon to fathom. Once only had I known him to fail, in
the case of the King of Bohemia and of the Irene Adler
photograph; but when I looked back to the weird business of the
Sign of Four, and the extraordinary circumstances connected with
the Study in Scarlet, I felt that it would be a strange tangle
indeed which he could not unravel.

I left him then, still puffing at his black clay pipe, with the
conviction that when I came again on the next evening I would
find that he held in his hands all the clues which would lead up
to the identity of the disappearing bridegroom of Miss Mary